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At Home with the Collective: A Seminar and Studio on the Future of Housing
UIC School of Architecture 
Associate Professor Alexander Eisenschmidt

While housing could be described as one of the basic forms of architecture and one of its main responsibilities, if not today’s most crucial task, architecture has largely ceased to rethink established forms of living and the politics and economies that surround it. Indeed, escaping the pervasive models of profit-based home ownership seems increasingly difficult, even if the urgency of the topic manifests in the lack of affordable housing in the US. Therefore, a graduate research studio, including a seminar in Fall 2023 and a studio in Spring 2024, aimed at studying innovative housing schemes across the globe, engaging local communities and learning from their struggle, and developing new typologies of living for the American city. The term “collective” was introduced as a mechanism to refocus housing as a community-building, solidarity-building, and city-building activity that can challenge the fallacies of “home,” contest residential segregation, and speculate on alternatives to private ownership. The seminar embarked on a global survey of housing projects, visited innovative housing schemes like Marina City, joined tours of the National Public Housing Museum under construction in Chicago, and met with community housing advocates, resulting in a summit on collective housing that invited architects and activists from around the world to our home institution and staged workshops with local community leaders and politicians. The students were not only present but active participants as they helped organize the summit and gained first-hand research experience. For the studio, the insights from the seminar became instrumental as each student was now able to design with a community in mind and advocated for better urban living in Chicago—a city with a particularly grim public housing history. Through surveys, focus groups, and workshops with affected communities, students developed projects for particular groups of marginalized people.

AIA/ACSA Housing Design Education
To recognize the importance of good education in housing design to produce architects ready for practice in a wide range of areas and able to be capable leaders and contributors to their communities. An AIA/ACSA Award.